Here’s the summary:

1) Hamas: Let’s attack an Israeli military outpost!
2) Hamas: Let’s kidnap a 19-year-old Israeli soldier!
3) Palestinians: Let’s celebrate! Hamas militants kick ass!
4) Israel: Release the boy, or else
5) Palestinians: No way
6) Hamas: No way
7) Hamas: (Gloats and prepares for battle)
Israel: (Launches massive offensive in the Gaza Strip)
9) Israel: (Totally defeats the Palestinians, and captures 60 Hamas leaders)
10) Hamas + Palestine: Oppression! Oppression! Zionist aggression!!

Note: Mainstream media will be quite likely to harp on and on about parts (8) to (10) only in the coming days, with no indication of events (1) to (7) being precedents. The UN will condemn Israel’s actions and totally scratch their heads if told that there was an Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas that triggered this battle.

And people will be talking about how Palestinians are always the victims, the media is controlled by Zionists and Jews, and the United Nations is a Zionist/American mouthpiece.

Huh?

Speak of Gaza, what happened to that beach incident? There was all that hoo-haa about Israel shelling the beach (with minimal mention that it’s a counter-attack to Hamas’ Qassam attacks). And then there’s that Human Rights Watch preliminary investigation that saw a Left-Wing ex-Pentagon staff claiming that a shrapnel on the beach says "155mm", consistent with Israeli weapons (though he did not perform forensics analysis to see the AGE of that shrapnel).

And then, the Israeli military conducted a meticulous investigation (of course, after apologizing and taking the blame first) and concluded that it’s not caused by their artillery, which the HRW’s second investigation agreed with, and the HRW investigator arrived at the same conclusion as the Israeli military.. hardly any news in the mainstream media about this retraction. And as expected, no apology from Hamas or Palestinians.

And the Jews control the media? Huh?

Palestinians said that they want self-determination in their own state, and urged Israel to return to behind the Green Line, or the pre-1967 Armistice Line.

Last I checked, the Gaza wihtdrawal took Israel back to behind the Green Line, and the entire Gaza Strip that’s in Palestinian control right now is the same Gaza Strip territory before the 1967 war.

And yet, Palestinians are launching attacks on Israel to push them further in. This sort of dishonourable double-speak is a prime characteristic of the Palestinians, especially among their leaders who would say some sugar-coated words in English to declare to the world that they’re about ‘peace’ and ‘diplomacy’, and then switching to Arabic to describe how they would send all the Jews into the sea and reinstate a Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire beginning in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.

Yeah, the Palestinians are the victims. Yeah, Israel is the oppressor who wants nothing but war. Yeah, the Palestinians are peace-loving and have been shafted by the world’s powers after World War 2. Yeah, the Jews control the world. The Zionists own every media outlet in the world. It’s the media that demonizes Palestinians and those like them. They’re freedom fighters, not terrorists. Yeah right.

It’s not surprising that a recent study have shown a massive decrease in support and sympathy for the Palestinians all over the world. Perhaps people are wising up towards their myths of victimhood, blatant lies and fabricated ‘news’.. and of course, the fact that they employ state terrorism towards perceived threats within and without Palestine.

I remember back in Standard Four, when we first learned about Penicillin. We were told that some chap discovered it by extracting some stuff from mushrooms, and found it to be effective in killing bacteria.

But being 9-year-olds, this lesson on Penicillin naturally resulted in two things:

1) Chuckles and giggles in class to the reference of "Penisilin" as it was spelled in BM, because we spotted the "Penis" in "Penisilin". This was way before we were acquainted with Beavis and Butthead.

2) The desire to formulate our own penicillin.

One of the adventurous chaps who attempted the daring task of formulating his own penicillin was my childhood neighbour, Chelvam.

During recess, he went to every tree stump around our classroom block and collected mushrooms of all varieties. He placed them all in a jar and started jabbing the mushrooms with a pencil, and mixing the deadly concotion with water and other stuff. Pretty soon, he had a foul-smelling greenish-brown liquid in the jar. He claimed that this was ‘penicillin’.

To test the efficacy of his penicillin, he decided to see if has anti-bacterial properties. I’m not sure why, but for Standard Four kids, pests like cockroaches and snails are lumped into the same category as germs. So this enterprising guy, Chelvam, tested out his penicillin on some snails. When the snails retracted back into their shells, similar to how they appear when exposed to salt, he decided that his penicillin was working.

The next thing he did was to offer his marvellous invention to any willing taker. We were playing police-and-thief around the compound at that time, and as usual, we were bound to have bruises and scrapes on our elbows, palms and knees from falling down or rolling on the ground. Choon Kong had a particularly bad scrape on his knee. Chelvam promptly approached him (he called Choon Kong "Choon Toi" all the time):

"Eh, Choon Toi, lu ada luka ka? Mau ini, Penisilin!!", he said.
Choon Kong snapped back at him, "Tak mahu lah! Pergi jauh sikit!"
"Eh Choon Toi, marilah! Ini Penisilin, boleh sembuh lu punya luka!"
"Woi bodoh! Apa itu racun?? Tak mahu la!"
"Lu la bodoh! Tarak baca  sains ka? Ini penisilin la! Ubat!"
"Lu mau saya mati kah?!"

After that, Choon Kong kept his distance from Chelvam. Chelvam didn’t give up. He went around offering people his ‘penicillin’ to heal recess-time wounds and bruises, but there were no takers. Towards the end, he even tried to splash some on others’ wounds.

While Chelvam was the biologist/chemist of the lot, I was more into physics and electricity. Reading my brother’s books, I found out about transformers and how they can be used to step-up and step-down voltages. The radio back home had just malfunctioned, and upon taking it apart, I was delighted to find a 240v-to-6v transformer! Knowing that the dynamoes on our bicycles generated around 5 volts AC, I was hoping that I can step it up to around 200 volts by running it through this transformer!

Back then, I had no concept of current, charge, or electrical power. I didn’t know that it was the amperes that kill a person, not the voltage. But as far as I was concerned, if the 240 volts at home can kill someone, 200 volts ought to give them a nasty electric shock!

So I proceeded to hook up some wires from the bicycle dynamo to the transformer’s coils, and connecting the step-up side to a pair of rigid steel wires fastened to a wooden handle. My plan was to activate the dynamo, ride past some stranger and jab them on the arm or neck with this prod. I was hoping that they’ll fall to the ground, writhing and convulsing, typical of being electrocuted. But of course, I had no way of testing whether I was getting the necessary voltage out. I didn’t dared to touch the rods, for obvious reasons.

So when I finally set out with grand ideas to terrorize people via mobile electrocution, I was terribly disappointed that nothing happened! Nobody felt a thing. People didn’t get zapped unconcious. Nobody ended up at the side of the road with foam in their mouths. It was disappointing. All that happened was people getting pissed off at being prodded by a kid speeding past on a bicycle.

There were other instances of mad-scientist shenanigans among us. During the Chinese New Year, we had plenty of fireworks back then. We knew that some exploded while some displayed bright colours, but we weren’t really sure what set them apart. We had always thought that it’s due to the propellant or the flammable material within the firework that caused this distinction, i.e. some powders explode while others just burn.

So there was this time when a bunch of us got those ‘red crackers’, the ones that Chinese love to hang on their gates and ignite. We dilligently cracked open these firecrackers one by one, and emptied out the contents into a wheat germ bottle. We got the bottle half-full, and we used a shred of newspaper as the fuze. We lit it up and ran like hell.. we were expecting some serious explosions! But, to our surprise, there was a bright instantaneous flame with lots of smoke, and that was it.. no explosion, no bang.. nothing. We were certainly puzzled.. It wasn’t until later that we found out that something explodes if it’s sealed on all sides and the pressure has nowhere to go.

Another memorable experiment in pyrotechnics was performed by Veera and myself, back in Form Three. We had nicked a can of Mortein from the Bilik Sains Rumahtangga, and particularly proud of our achievement. We’d hold a lighter in front of the nozzle, and squeeze the head.. using it like a flamethrower. We tried to torch everything including phone booths, bus stops and school textbooks nicked from classmates’ bags.. typical of the vandals that we are at that age. We saw this old oil barrel, and kicked it over, and saw lots of insects and cockroaches inside the barrel! Veera lit a piece of newspaper and threw it into the barrel, and yelled "Jae Senn! Kill the bastards!!" and I gave a big squeeze on that can of Mortein.

The flame shot out and engulfed the insides of the barrel but, upon hitting the end of the barrel, it came back towards my face! This happened in a split-second. Next thing I know, Veera was telling me, "Macha.. your hair is burning, dei!!"

There were those other times in upper secondary when we overloaded on alumina during those Thermite experiments and made a big blast at the school lab.. and when some fools spilled a whole jar of bromium and everyone ran out of the lab yelling, as if we’ve been hit by a nerve gas attack (this was in 1995).. Asogan and I were yelling "Sarin! Sarin!", referring to the Aum Shinrikyo subway attacks.

Random picture of the day

The word for today is GAG protein. Some viruses has a structure in them called GAG, which stands for Glycosamineglycan. In the HIV virus, this is one of the important structures.

Earlier this year, one of the more promising new technologies towards an AIDS antidote is the suppression of the CCR5 receptors which prevents the HIV virus from latching on to macrophages. However, a criticism of this method is that we’re targetting the body’s immune system itself for modification, not the virus. Suppression of CCR5 can lead to other problems (more minor than a HIV infection, admittedly) and might even present an selective pressure that forces HIV to mutate from an M-tropic state to a T-tropic state sooner, whereupon the total failure of the immune system will occur sooner.

The other method that’s being tried out is the disruption of the HIV virus’ GAG protein to affect RNA packaging, causing the virus to be defective in that it can’t transmit its genetic sequence to the targeted host. The GAG protein, upon maturation, will form the RNA capsid of the virus. By disrupting the formation of the RNA capsid, we are affecting the storage and transmission of the viral RNA.

Effectively, we won’t kill the virus, but the virus’ offsprings will be defective and easily killed by our own immune system. Collectively, this new class of drugs are known as "maturation inhibitors".

Petaling Jaya will be officially accorded city status tomorrow, but apparently residents of PJ (and semi-residents like myself) are cool towards the idea.

Well, it seems that most PJ residents thought that PJ was already a city, much like how Singaporeans thought that they’re already on par with the United States and the European Union. Further compounding this sense of superiority, some of them even mentioned that PJ felt like a city all this while.

Did it?

Not to me, it didn’t. The Federal Highway is so long in the tooth that we really need to look at implementing a ring road outside of this main artery to relieve traffic jams particularly at the Motorola and "Old KFC" junctions. Commercial centres are sparsely dotted across the landscape, separated from each other by quite some distance. Too many parts of PJ are still maintained in their near-unplanned form, especially at the PJ Old Town area where sections of it feels like Serdang or Jinjang. And also, most of PJ feels old..

But then again, Saigon is also a city, isn’t it?

MPPJ’s mishandling of public funds is still fresh in the minds of most PJ residents. Generally, most people would agree that MPPJ is somewhat incompetent, and resident groups have regularly complained and asked MPPJ to buck up and get their act straight.

Well, what do you know? Before MPPJ can fix up their shortcomings, PJ has become a city, and MPPJ will be renamed to MBPJ.

Ahh, I see the benefit of this maneuver. In future, they can throw away all those complaint letters addressed to "MPPJ", and ignore newspaper reports about "MPPJ".. Because, "hey, that’s not us, that’s someone else! We’re MBPJ.. people are banging on about MPPJ."

Let’s analyze this new city, shall we?

One of the areas where the facilities are the most modern, and plenty of jobs are available, is Phileo Damansara at Section 16. BUT… look at the access road! Only two lanes leading up to Phileo Damansara, with limited accessibility from Sprint’s Damansara Link.. and check out that place after office hours! There’s only one way out of there, and you can be stuck for over 30 minutes at a stretch of road less than 1 kilometre long.

Hmm.. let’s see what other new modern places are there.. Kelana Square, near Kelana Centre Point.. well, these two places may not be THAT jammed, but look at them! They’re located quite some distance away from the main roads, there’s highly limited accessibility and connectivity to these areas. It would appear that access roads are an afterthought, because the developers figured that we’ll all own flying cars by the time the buildings are commissioned. BUT, the development can be approved by MPPJ…

And what else.. oh, of course, the SS2 town centre! This place is absolutely HORRIBLE. Especially the road leading out from SS2 to the LDP near Damansara Jaya. While the housing areas around SS2 are quite okay to live in (except those facing the main roads), the main town area where Burger King and McDonalds are may be quite cosmopolitan but it feels old, like it’s stuck in the late 70s, and the roads are so poor. Parking is regularly a challenge, too. If you’d take a drive around that area, you’ll also notice that the only clinics available there are dental clinics. Double- and triple-parking is a common feature during dinner time, because cinapeks usually consider only their own convenience without consideration for others.

The newer areas of PJ are alright.. like Centrepoint Bandar Utama’s new wing, and The Curve/Ikea/Ikano Power Centre at Mutiara Damansara. Most parts of PJ are stuck in the past. Areas with schools still have narrow roads and are prone to traffic jams (just look at La Salle PJ, for instance).

To me, PJ is a big hodge-podge of townships old and new. It is not a coherent development with proper planning and proper distribution of commercial, suburban and industrial areas. Most new roads are afterthoughts, and do little to help with the traffic congestion. The traffic congestion occurs in the first place due to poor road planning and the presence of bottlenecks everywhere.

PJ being declared a city? Big deal. It’s like having a cat but calling it a ‘dog’, and it still meows, eats tuna and doesn’t give a damn about you.

Forum to discuss possibility of another world war

Over here, we are told that a forum will be held about the next world war. However, being organized by the Perdana Peace Forum, you know what to expect - one-sided anti-US rhetoric, plenty of conspiracy theories, and lots of far-left rantings.

In other words, this forum is not likely to be worth checking out.

The sort of thing they’ll talk about - The United States are the oppressors, the war in Iraq is all about oil, the war against Iran is merely due to their nuclear ambitions, etc. Everything has only a single simple explanation; and the United States, the "Jewish Lobby", the "Neo-cons", and of course, the Zionists, are all guilty and evil.

Terror attacks on civilians are a justified response to Zionist and US aggression, Palestinians are perpetually innocent bystanders who are being attacked for no reason, Israel is occupying lands illegally, et cetera.

Fat chance they’ll mention about the global threat of pro-Caliphate extremists plotting to overthrow democratic governments to re-establish a medieval super-state spanning from Spain to South East Asia. Don’t expect them to mention about Palestinian hoaxes and manipulations of the media, fabrication of news stories, deliberate sacrifice of their own people to demonize Israel and many other wrongdoings. They’ll speak of Israeli occupation but they won’t mention about the Arab countries still actively declaring war on Israel and intending to eliminate Israel entirely. And of course, no hope whatsoever about them mentioning that Israel has repeatedly made offers to cede the occupied lands if the Arabs would declare that they’re no longer actively at war with Israel.

This is the sort of forum that will ask the audience to "look at both sides of the story" while force-feeding their one-sided view down our throats. This is the sort of forum that invites dubious characters like George Galloway and hails him as a hero, for the sake of furthering a common anti-US and anti-Israel agenda.

If this Perdana outfit wants to seriously organize an impartial peace forum, then they shouldn’t invite only speakers who agree with their anti-US and anti-Israel sentiment. They should have a more balanced mix of speakers, left-wing and right-wing, as well as centrists and libertarians. They should be daring enough to invite Daniel Pipes and Jamie Glazov in addition to Jeffrey St. Clair and Noam Chomsky. How about far-right conservatives like Ann Coulter to counter the moonbat lunacy of Justin Raimondo?

Forum about the next world war? Well, we don’t need a forum on that. The way things are unfolding right now, the background for the next world war is painfully obvious. It’s not even a mere ‘clash of civilizations’ as Huntington puts it, it would be a battle among ideologies and ideals much like how the Cold War was. It would be a long, drawn-out war of attrition involving hundreds and thousands of civilian casualties on both sides of the divide - on one side, civilians will be the primary targets of violence. On the other, they will be collateral damage due to faulty intelligence and the usage of ‘human shields’. It will be an asymmetrical war on a global scale. A monolithic military organization may not be well-prepared to fight this sort of war, it would take local militias to sort things out.

Random picture of the day

I’m more messed up than ever right now, being on a cocktail of antibiotics and what-not for the past 1 week. The random word for today is "mefenamic acid", commonly known by its trade name "Ponstan".

Apparently, the pain-killing mechanism of mefenamic acid is still not known. This may sound scary, as if it’s a sort of voodoo drug. But the fact is that most anaesthesia are also of an unknown mechanism or pathway. We can only suspect how an anaesthetic works.

In the case of Ponstan, it is thought to be related to its inhibitory action towards prostaglandin. Other anaesthetics like benzocaine function by blocking the sodium channels required to deliver the pain signals along the nerve endings to the brain. Benzocaine is regularly used in analgesics, including throat drops like Dequadin.

Ponstan is typically used to relief period pains, and so it’s easily available at pharmacies. It’s considered an NSAID (non-steroidal anti inflammatory drug), and as with most NSAIDs, it’s a painkiller, anti-inflammatory and anti-pyretic (reduces fever).

The other NSAID that I’ve tried is Neurofen, a trade name for the compound Ibuprofen. Now, this guy, it will help to reduce a high temperature but it does absolutely nothing for pain. I once tried neurofen as a painkiller when I had an open wound, but it had absolutely no effect.

My throat still hurts like hell, but being somewhat of a masochist, I don’t really give a damn.

Yeah, the sambal in that kuey tiow goreng may burn my throat up and make my inner ear throb with pain, but I guess that’s only due to the inflammation.. it’s not likely to aggravate the existing infection. Hell, my inner ear throbs with pain each time I swallow my saliva or speak anyway. The inflammation of my tonsils is THAT bad.

I have finished most of the medication that the GP gave, but my infection has yet to improve. He gave me Cipro as antibiotic, Clarinase to reduce my sinusitis and Ibuprofen to reduce the inflammation.

But heck, sometimes GPs don’t really make good diagnoses. Apparently, NSAIDs such as ibuprofen shouldn’t be used in conjunction with fluoroquinolones like Ciprofloxacin. Furthermore, if my swollen throat is caused by streptococcus infection, the bacteria may even develop resistance against Ciprofloxacin! I’m supposed to be on penicilin-derived antibiotics first, with quinolones being a 2nd choice. Hmmm… And the ibuprofen? I guess the GP gave it to me as a painkiller too, but being a relaxant more than anything else, it wasn’t effective at all at reducing the pain.

So right now, I’m gargling with Cool Mint Listerine to numb my throat. Seems to be pretty effective. Whenever I wanna look for proper medical information, I’ll head over to the PubMed database and do some simple lookups.

It seems that ciprofloxacin does have an effect on streptococcus, so I guess I’m alright at this point.. although the course of antibiotics didn’t seem to reduce the redness of my tonsils at all. Listerine helps to kill streptococcus too, and I hope it’ll work synergistically with Cipro to heal my throat fast.. the pain is pissing me off on a daily basis.

But another study, on the other hand, seems to indicate that Listerine is good for nothing. Now, I’m a little puzzled. Perhaps that particular product, "Listerine with Essential Oils", is one of those ‘organic’ stuff with none of the strong chemicals.

So, how good exactly is Listerine? The list of ingredients include water, sorbitol, ethanol, thymol, methyl salicylate, benzoic acid, poloxamer, anethole and sodium saccharin.

Out of all the ingredients,

1) Sorbitol, thymol, anethole and sodium saccharin are ARTIFICIAL FLAVOURINGS to lend a sweet taste and strong smell to Listerine. Sorbitol is mildly antiseptic, but that’s about it.

2) Methyl Salicylate has a deep-heating effect.

3) Ethanol and poloxamer probably serve as a base to suspend the rest of the ingredients.

4) Benzoic acid? I don’t know.. preservative, I guess.

So what the heck is the active ingredient of this damn thing??!! Based on this superficial finding itself, I’m beginning to think that Listerine is something like an analgesic and a placebo..

The only indication listed at the back of the Listerine bottle says "For general oral hygiene, Bad breath, plaque and the gum infection Gingivitis ". Seems that about the only thing it can positively treat is gingivitis, which doesn’t seem so hard to prevent. And yet, the front label of the packaging says that it’s an antiseptic mouthwash that "kills germs".

Perhaps it’s time to look for mouthwashes based on chlorhexidine and cetylpyridinium chloride. Besides, they sure appear to have pretty positive results in the field of dental science. When conclusions are based on findings from PubMed, I’m pretty sure they’re reliable.

Random picture of the day

The random phrase for today is "Sic vis pacem, para bellum", or in its proper form, "Si vis pacem, para bellum".

The phrase translated literally into "In times of peace, prepare for war", or in its context, "For times of peace, prepare for war" or "If you seek peace, prepare for war". This phrase was made famous in the movie "The Punisher", where Frank Castle (played by Thomas Jane) mentioned that their commander drilled this phrase into them daily.

The origin of this phrase is attributed to Cicero. Entymologically, it is said to be a truncation of what General Vegetius said, i.e. "Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum" which means "Therefore, let him who desires peace, prepare for war".

Mmm.. babe… I bet this is during that "time of peace" we’re talking about..

A political caricature by Cox & Forkum..

Collage of the Omega Team, Recon platoon of the 104th Air Cavalry.

World News headlines for the past few days have been screaming at Israel for the Gaza beach incident. Typical of liberal news outlets, Israel was lynched and pronounced guilty based on reports and allegations from "Palestinian sources" even as investigations were underway.

Through it all, I feel a sense of pity for Israel. Hamas and Palestinians are known to lie and cook up evidence to demonize Israelis.. even when they are the aggressors, they can spin the media such that they appear to be the victims, and Israel have initiated an unprovoked attack against civilian targets willfully.

In reality, the opposite is true - Hamas and other Palestinian militants actively target Israeli civilians, and they regularly use Palestinian civilians as human shields.

So, here’s the story so far. Qassam rockets were launched into Israel from the Gaza strip, killing and injuring some Israeli civilians. Of course, the mainstream news media have somehow forgotten that this incident sparked off the Israeli artillery response. In an attempt to destroy the Qassam rocket sites, the Israeli military launched an artillery attack against the sites from where these rockets were fired, and the offensive was backed up by an Israeli naval gunboat.

During the exchange of fire, an Israeli artillery shell was alleged to have landed on the Gaza beach, killing and injuring innocent Palestinians in the process. Immediately, the media jumped at it and made it sound like Israeli launched a deliberate attack on beach-goers.

There are a few uncomfortable questions regarding this chain of events. Among them:

1) The Israeli military response was targeting a Qassam rocket site in the vicinity of the beach. Why would Hamas militants station their weapons sites among civilians if not for the purpose of exploiting them as human shields?

2) The Israeli military has shown the trajectories of all six shells fired by them, and all the shells are accounted for, and none of them landed on the beach. It’s like saying I have six bullets in my gun, but somehow a bystander was killed by a seventh bullet, supposedly from my gun.

3) Palestinians actively rejected initial investigations, and fouled up the site of the incident so much that no proper investigation could be launched. All the evidence has been tampered with, and no independent investigation was allowed.

4) In the pictures of the incident site, the damage inflicted on the beach was not consistent with an explosion from an artillery shell. There was no characteristic crater, the injured and dead were too close apart rather than being thrown far apart by an exploding artillery shell, etc. The beach chairs, slippers, etc were still on the beach, and not blown away.

5) Pictures of a little girl crying for her father was taken from 3 different angles, almost immediately after the incident (which revealed no tell-tale signs of an artillery explosion). How did the Palestinian media get there so fast? Or did they always have cameras on standby? Or could it be.. the scene was staged? (Which is hardly surprising).

Furthermore, Israel had the grace to immediately apologize for the incident, and offered medical aid, and launched a full-scale investigation into the incident. The outcome of their investigations, however, concluded that their military was not responsible. One would say that the Israeli inquiry would be biased, but here’s some other information:

1) Israel was targeting the Qassam sites based on aerial videos taken from their reconnaisance drones, and they also had video of the incident as recorded from the gunboat. The IDF had mentioned that with these secure video recordings, they concluded that the explosion was caused by Hamas, not the IDF.

2) The explosion on Gaza beach occurred 15 minutes after the Israeli military position ceased their firing.

The IDF investigation has raised the possibility that the beach was mined, and it was a Hamas landmine that caused the explosion. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, oddly enough, said that IDF claims about finding landmines on the beach is odd. Omaha, anyone?

It’s too early to establish a conclusion surrounding the event, but it’s too late to undo the damage done by the anti-Israel propaganda machine.

Palestinians still have not learned from the Al-Durah, ‘Martyrs Junction’ and Jenin incidences, where they exploited foreign media to the hilt to generate sympathy at the expense of truth. People from the non-liberal and non-mainstream media outlets regularly see how Palestinians lie and create fake stories and situations to make Israel look bad.

For those of us who are more interested in hearing both sides of the tale, documentaries such as Pierre Rehov’s Road to Jenin would be an excellent start. It would be pretty hard to get our hands on this documentary, but it’s well worth it.

If this incident is eventually proven to be Israel’s fault, there’s no difference from how it stands right now - the world has already judged Israel to be guilty. But if it is proven that Israel is innocent and the Gaza beach incident is the fault of Palestinians themselves, will Hamas and other Palestinian groups have the grace to apologize to Israel and take responsibility? It will be a cold day in Hell if that ever happens.

Been between jobs, and this blog has more or less died.. or at least, it was in stasis. Anyway, during the past few days, we found out that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by an airstrike launched by coalition forces.

Soon after, conspiracy theories started mounting on Arab and leftist media that Zarqawi was beaten to death, or that he was in captivity earlier, but beaten to death in what is claimed to be a successful airstrike in order for the Bush Administration to deflect attention away from other problems.

But the latest news suggests otherwise.

I noticed a few gems with this piece of excellent news-writing:

Seeking to dispel allegations that al-Zarqawi was beaten or shot while
in U.S. custody, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said an autopsy performed
Saturday proved the Jordanian-born militant died of "massive internal
injuries" that were consistent with a blast caused by the two 500-pound
bombs dropped on his hideout.

Yeah, I guess massive bodily injuries from being blown up by something would count for being "consistent with a blast" caused by bombs. But I wonder: why isn’t massive injuries like that consistent with being hit by a humvee, or falling down from 10 storeys and landing flat on your belly?

"All the injuries found were consistent with the type seen in blast
victims," Jones said. "The abrasions, lacerations and the fracture were
likely due to flying debris, or Zarqawi being thrown against a hard
object by the force of the blast."

No shit? I mean, I’m no expert or whatever, but I guess 1000 pounds of cyclonite, which would equal something like 1600 pounds of TNT under ideal conditions, would surely pack a massive punch. And I don’t suppose the recipient of such a punch would only suffer from internal injuries and nothing more..

PS - If you’re in police custody for a week, a medic who’s giving you a checkup might arrive at the same conclusion.

An Iraqi man identified only as Mohammed, who said he lives near the
house where al-Zarqawi and five others were killed, told AP Television
News and The Washington Post that he saw U.S. soldiers after the
airstrike beating an injured man until blood flowed from his nose. He
said the man resembled al-Zarqawi. It was not clear if he mistook
first-aid procedures for a beating.

Much like how honour killings and death-by-stoning are mistaken to be humane punishment in that part of the world, I guess..

And, nearby in the ever-exciting land that is Palestine/Israel, it looks like a civil war is about to break out. Democracy doesn’t seem to work very well in the Mideast.. maybe the United States should stop thinking that their republican democracy is the panacea for all the world’s ills.

Random picture of the day

The word for today is DNA gyrase. What the heck is that??

Well, I’m on antibiotics right now for a really bad throat infection. The doctor prescribed Cipro. Wait a minute.. isn’t Cipro a sort of last-resort antibiotic due to its immense strength and broad-spectrum activity?

Apparently, Cipro belongs to a class of drugs known as fluoroquinolones, that act by actively binding to the enzyme called DNA gyrase which facilitates the reproduction of bacteria. DNA gyrase isn’t involved in the reproduction of other cells in the body, though. However, knowing that our body is somewhat symbiotic with thousands of species of bacteria (such as those bacillii in the digestive tract), I wonder if Cipro might mess them up.